At a campaign stop at Drake University
in Iowa, Paul was asked, “Do you think that employers should be
able to fire an LGBT employee because that person is LGBT?”

“I think really the things you do in
your house, if you could just leave those in your house, they
wouldn't have to be part of the workplace, to tell you the truth,”
Paul answered.

The question, Paul added, was
“difficult” because laws prohibiting workplace discrimination
would enable LGBT people to sue their employers.

“I don't know that we need to keep
adding to different classifications to say the government needs to be
involved in hiring and firing,” Paul said. “I think society is
rapidly changing, and if you are gay, there are plenty of places that
will hire you.”

JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president
for policy and political affairs at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC),
the nation's largest LGBT rights advocate, criticized Paul's
comments.

“Rand Paul appears to be living in a
different era. People should not be required to live in the closet
or hide who they are in order to be treated equally and fairly under
the law,” Winterhof
told the Washington
Blade. “Rand Paul is going to find very little support for
his views among the nine out of ten Americans who have an LGBT person
in their lives. But Rand Paul's comments do beg the question of
whether his fellow candidates will call him out for embracing a
platform of discrimination.”